Mamaw Ruth lived at 1305 Hinkle Drive with Papaw Allen
who took his teeth
out at night and sometimes ate grapes
with just his gums.
She let me have strawberries and ice-cream and pop-corn
and whatever else I wanted
and there was always honeysuckle
behind their house my favorite tree
and preying mantises. The crepe myrtle in my hair
sure was hard to prune, Papaw always said
and on those nights I got to watch some HBO and stay up
late
she’d scratch my back and sing
Que sera, sera…
the window unit air-conditioner conditioned my sleep
and in the morning always
scrambled eggs
bacon
Tang
chocolate milk
strawberries
Mamaw Ruth’s slippers slapping the carpet down the hall.
i always loved that ? Dum Dum sucker
the best
not root beer
again
oh please not grape cherry orange lemon
Surprise!
like when Lu ordered the albondigas soup she was 80 years old, never had it
before
she just saw the word ’soup’
she was sitting in her wheelchair i’ll never forget
the look
on her face
‘WHAT THE HELL IS THAT’ Jake yells
one big meatball
a plate of motionless water
empty
fragrant
smiling, almost
Lu wasn’t.
pastels
all of these are broken but I like the box
go ahead
laugh when mom mailed
it they got broken
your ideas are funny
the entire week before, I was hanging around
looking for the life of me for a chaise lounge allover the want-ads
they were too expensive
then you
————————->dragged yours out under a tree
there was no sense dragging it out
somewhere in Mississippi, you were probably just de
hydrated
you
had your friend help you
drag that thing outside
sat down on sunday
under a tree
and when he left
you
thought nobody would see
We sit in the evening
having succumbed to a giant shade
of succumbing.
Our hands no longer touching
the minutes stretching in awesome horoscopes
of fibres we do not read which once required salutation.
Now hands
having touched another, succumb to silence
refuse
the heavy door
succumb to the poverty
of nuance in meaningless gesture as typing
and the daily Now
cannot remember
the backyard grinding of a radio
where fickle fingers in unbuttons
of shadow give meaning to each other and
caress
the pressing
shirtsleeve, dusk
once in another form
and slipping of fingers through metal
or distant rubs in the motioning jungle
tied insatiably to
careening
coarse angles and sweat.
Our hands cannot remember.
Just yesterday walking home our hands refused an honest touch and hung
useless the wind
waiting the pedestrian passing light
To blink, ignoring one another.
Last Tuesday
disinterested in skin,
our hands fidgeted with thread as a single guide
to indifference. To not caress.
We are made incoherent to ourselves by this not touching.
Unelegant
Fingers remember unfeeling, forget
the feel of each
other’s closet carpet en motion
the feel of
Evening
where once they lurched singing for a door to open future worlds
whose dreams might hurtle us onto some other clime
of a heaven clattering warm cups.
Oh, sweet
senses
tapping subways window ledges and the grocer’s
shallow nailbeds
echoing
a dirt of him, who, unexpected,
gave us
his, which strummed the lemon’s
strings, tongued the palms and
scratched the mournful songs. Burned by
those hands, a tenderness which the moons of our eyes
have not forgotten.
Hands for which no worthy thing exists once grasp is gone
of the texture it chose best
his skin
a smooth alabaster dresser
of edges
lost.
These hands
shall forget
as children in water
forget the shore. But unlike children the shore will be a clinging thing for these hands
as a stationary object which could be held
were it not for the knowing
of a sea.
The turning of her shapely body into ancient took place years before.
Alveoli straining against emphysema, when cigarettes were considered seductive.
The hole in her ankle she let me poke with swab and peroxide
where the bone once lay, a metal pin.
Her bedside table, a pharmacist’s revenge.
Sundays up, cooking shrimp, propped with walker by the pot
swirling lemon salt and tails
onion pepper
bags of crab boil churning in water.
Mornings I stirred before the Tang
found her staring down the drain
I’d eye her through the door and wonder
why she lifted her dress at mama’s 12th birthday
nearly burnt the house down in bed with a smoke
left mama standing outside school until it got dark waiting on a ride
and no food for supper.
Now her house smells like forgotten cooking.
She piles up strawberries for breakfast, teaches me to make eggs
homemade perfume with honeysuckle, spider lilies floating in jars
and paint-by-number in oil where you pretend you’re the original.
What Mama remembers, Ruth forgets.
And I am the child.
Clashed between mother and daughter, careful in resentments
growing strong like a root, taking hold on either side.
You are lovely.
I who was lonely for no one
now lonely for the love of fire on a hill
Caressed, as it should be
unstopped by building or man.
Out here the newer fabrics defy
the sun.
Bright green thong
blotched skin shoulder harnesses
lazy material
barely
breasts
wedges of triangle blanch privates.
Green-necked John Travoltas.
Every modern female has tattooed eyeliner and a waxed mid-riff.
Across the slang of beach I walk.
Here for least terns, driftwood and oblivion
underwater photos
shiny black clam shells,
their bluish inner glaze flapping empty
saltwater butterflies.
Not dumb
Wish to think
Not speak.
My heart’s Beast.
Out of chest, Into mouth. To pull
your tongue
makes sense.
Leap
leap into your mouth and pull out your tongue.
I leap to the streets and
Torture Unopen
I want to fling rooftops but cannot see pictures
Hear
Meaning, I cannot
You’re handing the window
this feeling.
Honesty waves
Ledges. To fling myself over
You, sounding
and sorrow.
Music
not words
Backhands
the dying
That my grandmother’s hands were as clean as glass shown on a wet
sink-side
is a remembrance to me.
Snapshots of flowers and garden
trees to fertilize, and for planting.
There is a window in the front room. The room is little light tiny.
Her place is at the window, standing up,
as if looking out
takes all her strength.
She watches magnolia leaves sifting in shade and
takes account
of how the azaleas are coming along.
The phantom masses handed down
The siphoned sounds into my brain
And they took
Hold
I
Could not see
I could not see
There is too much butterscotch in the cherry ripple
But what if this is the stipulation,
An invitation to Not
be
To Not exist?